


Ashes

by baranduin



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 22:07:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/715631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baranduin/pseuds/baranduin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A relationship ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 2004 Secret Slasha.

He was restless before the break. You might ask how I could tell, wasn’t he always a little restless in his skin? Jittery, y’know? And not just with that nail-biting habit he couldn’t seem to break (if he even tried).

“Looking forward to going home, Elijah?” I asked him one day about a week before the break. By then we were all a little jittery and nervy. I think it was a sort of weird combination of wanting to go on break and see everyone at home and realizing that this was home now though we hadn’t quite settled into it. 

“Yeah,” he said, ash from his cigarette dropping on his hand. Not that you could really tell; costuming that day required dirty hands and cheeks.

I didn’t talk to him much more after that. I suppose that makes it sound like I talked to him a lot normally, but I didn’t, even when he was in my bed and I was making him scream with pleasure. But I did watch him when I got the chance, and I knew he was more restless than he usually was.

* * *

It didn’t feel right at home during break. It was sort of like it wasn’t really my home any more, which was ridiculous since how can any place my children live not be my home?

But that’s the way it was. Oh, I tried to slip back into my regular ways of doing things—watching football and drinking more than my share of John Smith’s, going round to visit friends who I hadn’t seen for far too long. Didn’t really work though I pretended that it did. 

Instead, I felt restless the entire time. Told myself that it was this thing I was involved in, this weird thing that was sucking up all my energy. I tried to work some of the kinks out by doing little bits of things, like helping clean out the chimney at a friend’s. All that got me was a dirty face and scraped knuckles.

I wanted to go home to New Zealand all the time I was at home in England. Even more, I wanted to have him back in my bed though I knew it wasn’t likely, and even if it did happen once more (or twice or three times ...) it wouldn’t mean much in the scheme of things other than to serve to make me restless for what I couldn’t really possess.

* * *

I ran into him one night off Cuba Street soon after I got back. Wasn’t really planned though I knew his haunts. It was a warm night, muggy too, which was strange after being home in the cold and the damp of a Sheffield winter.

“Have a good time in sunny L.A.?” I asked him.

“Not bad.” He stopped and leaned against a wall of sooty brick. When he lit a fag, the flare of the match lit up his face for a second. It looked pinched and tired; he was probably still jet-lagged.

“You sure?” I moved in close to him.

He looked up at me then and what could I do but lean down and kiss him? Hadn’t done that before though I’d fucked him enough times and enough ways to know the twists and turns of his body, its textures and smells. But there’s always a first time for everything, and this was our first kiss. 

His lips were soft and that surprised me, I suppose because I’d only felt them around my cock before and they weren’t soft then when they gripped me hard and sure and relentless. But they were soft now against my own lips and he let me taste him. I’d tasted the other parts of him, but this was new and somehow it seemed more intimate than all the other bits of him. I suppose, if I were being properly romantic, I would say his mouth was as sweet as honey but it wasn’t. He smoked too much for that, and he liked his beer as well. But I was a middle-aged fool, and so his mouth was sweet for all that, with the malt of the beer and the residue of clove against my tongue.

When I drew back, his hands were clenched around the collar of my t-shirt. Don’t know why it surprised me, I guess because I don’t remember him grabbing me, and my own hands had been braced against the bricks, the cement pointing rough and flaking off on my fingers and making me remember cleaning the chimney (though it was only my heart that was getting scraped and not my knuckles this time). Like I said, I was a middle-aged fool about him, and it wasn’t every day that someone like Elijah kissed me for the first time though it’s likely it was the last time (in more ways than one).

His eyes glittered. “I told you it’s not going to ...” He let go of my shirt, pulled his hands away and shoved them into his jeans pockets. “I’m sorry.” His voice was soft with regret and pity, and I believed him.

“I know.”

I watched him walk away, his shoulders hunched. I suppose he was off to meet the hobbits; they were never very far from each other. When I looked down at my t-shirt, I saw that his fingers had left their imprint; the fabric was still twisted, the fibers pulled out of shape, and there was even a bit of ground-in ash darkening it.

* * *

I started crying before he did. Fuck it all. I knew it was coming, knew I shouldn’t have done it but I couldn’t stop myself. Drank a dozen cans of John Smith’s and made a proper fool of myself over it.

But I wasn’t such a fool that I didn’t make sure I was alone when I watched the extended DVD footage of Elijah’s last scene, watched his face crumple when PJ called cut and his time on the set was officially complete and set in the stone of Middle-earth’s past.

I fell asleep on the couch that night, and since I’ve already said what a middle-aged fool I was, I don’t mind admitting that I watched that bit of the DVD over and over again. I don’t remember exactly when I knocked the empty beer cans off the table, but I suspect I drank a few more after that. When I woke up near noon, I tripped over a half dozen of them and found myself sitting on the floor, one hand trying to brace myself on the table.

My hand came away a little dirty, as if the table had been sprinkled with some cigarette ash though I hadn’t smoked anything the night before. It was just dust mixed with a little spilled beer, and it didn’t smell of cloves at all. That was only in my memory. 

And it was the first time since it all started that I didn’t feel restless, though I wished that I did.


End file.
